Meet Nick Worthington from The Tuesday Club

People Behind the Space: The Tuesday Club

Nick Worthington, Founder of The Tuesday Club

From shaping globally acclaimed ad campaigns to shaping an entire creative community in Auckland, Nick Worthington’s journey is anything but ordinary. In this edition of People Behind the Space, we sit down with the visionary behind The Tuesday Club, a space born from a Tuesday night ritual that grew into a thriving hub for makers, thinkers, and doers.

Nick shares the inspiration behind the venue, the creative spirit it fosters, and why surrounding yourself with good people is the secret ingredient to meaningful work.

The Tuesday Club Cafe

What led you to create The Tuesday Club, and how did the idea first come to life?

It actually started as one evening a week, where a bunch of hungry young advertising folk would get together to do the kind of work we wanted to do that we just couldn’t get made as part of our day jobs. Tuesdays were the night of the week when the fewest people had things to do, so that seemed like the perfect opportunity. We did some great work, had some fun, and eventually we got a building and had space to grow.

The Seduction of the Honeybee Exhibition at The Tuesday Club

You’ve had an extraordinary career in the world of advertising - how did your experience at agencies like BBH, AMV, and Colenso shape your vision for The Tuesday Club?

Advertising agencies are crammed with super bright people with incredible ideas, but heaps of the best ideas would never get made. I just learned to be more proactive and chase clients with ideas and not wait for opportunities to knock on your door. A great idea is a great idea; you just have to find the great client who shares your enthusiasm. And I learned the importance of working with great people. But the idea really came from my partner’s life; she was a glass artist in London and had a great workshop at home. But there was no stimulation working alone for too long, so she became a member of a studio which had space for 12 artists and makers, with an exhibition space and a café that was open to the public.

The artists all inspired each other, and it became a dream for me to have a similar space to me when I got out of the big network world, so I just needed a building and eleven other people to share it with. The idea of retiring and working on your book at home alone was my idea of hell, so yeah, we got a building and packed it full of great people. 

Exhibition at The Tuesday Club

The Tuesday Club champions "cool shit" that often gets sidelined - why do you think it’s important to carve out space and time for this kind of work?

I think the question kind of answers itself. We all have things we would love to do, but never seem to find the time, place, or people to do them with. So we’re just doing the things we would love to do with the people we love to do things with. And it turns out heaps of people want to do ‘cool shit’ too.

Nick Worthington at The Tuesday Club Cafe

Can you tell us about a Tuesday night that perfectly captured the spirit of the club?

Well, the club runs every weekday these days, but Tuesday nights are reserved for us to just do what we fancy, which is nearly always in the workshop, probably involving motorcycles in some shape or form, or working on a Tuesday Club project which would be for something or someone we love and not for profit. So the perfect night would see a few of us migrate from the top floor and away from our MacBooks to the basement workshop with the welding gear, lathes, and café.

Neil (our resident mechanic) would be there. The door is always open, so a few other people would drop in to chat about projects, or work on their bikes or art pieces, and we’d wrap up about nine and go to Tanuki’s for dinner. Something like that. Great people, great chats, maybe a bit of progress on a project or two. Happy days.

Workshops at The Tuesday Club

The space is split across three floors, each serving a different purpose. How do those levels interact to support collaboration and creativity?

I guess in simple terms, each function supports the others in some shape or form. The whole, I hope, is greater than the sum of the parts. The top floor is the brains, where the thinking happens. The middle floor is the gallery and event space where we get to share and show stuff, and the ground floor/basement is where we make stuff, and the café is there for everyone to get together, have coffee, or eat. The café’s door is open to the public from 7.30 till 2.30 each day, so that’s where anyone can just drop in and see what’s going on, find out what we are all about.

Exhibition at The Tuesday Club

What kind of people and projects gravitate toward The Tuesday Club, and what unites this eclectic group of members?

Friends, and friends of friends, who have something they want to do and need a space or simply some people to help get it done. I guess that’s the basic model. We started with Stolen Rum, who needed a space, they were friends I’d been working with, Justin Harwood’s film company, Tomorrowland and his crew, also Sunergise – a solar company I had helped found with Paul Makumbe and Lachlan McPherson, Lachlan’s own advertising company, and me and Katie. Each of us attracts our own cohort of clients and collaborators, and we cross-pollinated and then Stolen went to America, Sunergise grew and got their own offices, Tomorrowland scaled back to Piha, and AO studios moved in but grew so fast they now have their own space.

Now we have the publishers Blackwell and Ruth, Dave Brady’s design company Freebird, Nigel and Arvid’s production company Untold Projects… along with filmmaker Greg Wood and photographer Al Guthrie. We tend to all collaborate on projects when we need each other’s skills and get on with our own stuff when we don’t. But the stimulation is the thing. People doing interesting things.

Meetings at The Tuesday Club

How do you think physical spaces like The Tuesday Club influence the quality and direction of creative work?

I think it’s everything. Most people have good ideas, some even great, but it’s what happens to that idea after you have had it that matters. Most ideas get forgotten, lost, or worse - end up in the hands of people without the skills or the understanding to make those ideas great. So you have to have people around you who can take your idea on, people who can do the things you can’t. I discovered that at BBH back in the ‘80s.

My ideas were the same quality as they had always been, but something magical happened to them at BBH; they were recognised, understood, and then nurtured and grown. So I love having great people around me, and I hope that feeling goes both ways. I have done nothing great on my own.  

Nick Worthington at The Tuesday Club

What’s one skill or project you've taken on at The Tuesday Club that you never imagined doing in your ‘day job’ world?

Becoming a decent welder. That would never have happened. Or opening a gallery. Or a café. But from a brand perspective, I guess it would be being part of the creation of a best-selling book. We have done lots of wonderful things, but meeting Ruth Hobday and eventually Geoff Blackwell has been transformational in our approach to storytelling for brands.

As advertising media continues to fragment and lose its charm, creating things people want to engage with rather than interrupting them has led us to a different way to tell brand stories. It’s exciting and wonderful - two words that you don’t often hear in today’s advertising landscape. And then there would be the creation of AF Drinks with Lisa King. We couldn’t have done that with a conventional agency model. But with a few of the right people around the table, things have a way of happening.

The Moto Social at The Tuesday Club

You’ve mentioned jewellery workshops, neon sign-making, and even sandblasting - what’s the next hands-on pursuit you’re excited to bring into the space?

We bought some professional picture framing equipment a while back, after realising that it was costing us more to frame the art than the cost of the art itself. So yeah, Tony Gibb will hopefully be helping us run classes so we can all start framing our own art. I am excited about that. And Fiona McKay has started her ceramic workshops, which has always been a skill I wanted to learn. 

After years of building award-winning campaigns, what does “success” look like to you now through the lens of The Tuesday Club?

Having a place I look forward to going to every day.

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